25 Productivity Tips to Get Sh*t Done: For CEOs by CEOs

Think back to when you launched your business. You likely began with limitless energy to crush goals on your to-do list. Perhaps you feel exhausted by the time you get started on the meaningful work. It doesn’t have to be that way.

Get back the drive and excitement in running your small business with increased productivity.

Demands for your time and attention can be overwhelming. We live in a culture of digital distraction. You don’t have to look far to see these distractions in action.

Much of life’s success comes down to productivity and work performance. Productivity to entrepreneurs might have different meanings, but in general, it means to obtain the maximum output for the amount of effort or time you invest.

Productivity Tip #2. Ruthlessly Prioritize Your Activities

For me, it’s about ruthlessly prioritizing activities against my most important goals and then knocking them out early in the morning before distractions arise.

A think a huge part of this is related to building a habit of consistent self-inquiry to ask yourself whether the goals you set are the right ones and whether the activities you’ve selected are the highest leverage.

Reflecting, adjusting, and planning on a quarterly, monthly, weekly, and daily basis has been profoundly impactful.

Productivity Tip #5. Use Fear to Combat Complacency

For example, I walk in the door every single day scared that we are going to lose every customer we have if we aren’t hustling. This mindset helps me grind every day, all day long. It produces a culture of hustling.

Even when we have grown 100% year over year, it doesn’t matter. Fear. Not a moment to sit back and take it easy.

Productivity Tip #6. Choose To Be Happy

When we were first launching Bellhops, our team practically lived together. Working long hours alongside each other made it important to prioritize having fun and taking time to share moments where fun, family, and humor were the focus, not work.

The happiness advantage is a real thing. We’ve never forgotten that – even as we scaled our team to hundreds of employees nationwide.

Consciously working family and camaraderie into the equation makes us that much more productive when it’s time to dig in and get things done.

Productivity Tip #8. Automate, Anticipate, Delegate

Being productive and maximizing the hours in our workday is paramount. I personally always question “why” am I doing something and what is the value behind it.

Automate: Ask yourself what you can automate in your daily routine. Setting up smart folders with rules in Outlook is critical for me and keeps me organized. This tactic allows me to focus and not have to search through countless emails.

Anticipate: When I am working on projects and meeting deadlines I turn email and phone off to eliminate distractions.

Delegate: As a business owner everything flows through me, but it does not mean I should be doing it all. I am a firm believer in outsourcing and delegating to those who can do it better and give me a good ROT (Return on Time).

Productivity Tip #10. Schedule Time to Go Dark

I do this on airplanes. I intentionally don’t get the WiFi if it’s time for me to work on big projects or to do the work that only I can do.

Going offline works for me because I fly regularly. If you don’t fly often, then go to the library (you won’t see anyone you know there), spend the night in a hotel (in the city you call home), or find a way to go dark.

If we don’t, I’ve found, we just do the trivial-urgent things. I’ll argue that does not even work, that’s just being busy.

Productivity Tip #14. Take a Triage Approach

In the startup world, your most precious resource is your time. You’re never going to get it all done. So prioritize the things you can accomplish that will have the quickest and most significant impact and work your way backward from there.

The remarkable thing is that those items that don’t make it to the top of your list of priorities tend to resolve themselves anyway.

I found that I was jumping around too much based on the hundreds of notifications I was getting each day.

Second, I’ve been putting large blocks on my calendar (2-3 hours) for uninterrupted deep work. Deep work a time where I can think about the most important things for the week/month/quarter and be as proactive as possible.

Productivity Tip #16. Pick Your “One Thing” for the Week

There is a phenomenal book called The One Thing by Gary Keller. In the book, he proposes the question, “What is the one thing you can do this week, such that by doing it, everything else will be easier or unnecessary?”

Use this question as you plan every week, and pick that one thing. Then crush it.

When you do that week after week, you knock down large obstacles that move you closer to your targets instead of getting lost in the weeds.

What drains your energy? Get it off your plate. Spend two weeks documenting every single task that you do in your day to day work. Keep a log of this and build a massive list.

Once you have your list, sort this into three categories:

I love it, and it gives me energy.

I’m good at it, but I don’t love it.

It drains life and energy from me.

Start at the bottom and figure out how you can delegate and get those energy draining tasks off your plate. Tackling these tasks will free you up to focus on your areas of unique ability and ultimately produce far more value in the business.

Productivity Tip #24. Find a Rhythm

I’ve found that I am most productive in running our business and serving our clients when I isolate no more than three major tasks due on any given day.

I keep an ongoing list for opportunities that may pop up outside of the three, but those are my top priority. Aside from that, I block out 2-3 hours at a time on my calendar to accommodate larger tasks.

Managing my calendar this way allows me to increase business productivity and get into a rhythm for the deep work I’ve prioritized.

Productivity Tip #25. Own Your Schedule

Schedule meetings in a row

Meetings are crucial, but they can also waste time. Have you ever had multiple meetings with less than an hour in between them? For most of us, that “in-between time” usually gets wasted.

One of the best things you can do to get this time back is to schedule your meetings back-to-back.

Streamline time spent on email

One of the most common problems we face is the temptation to check email all day, even while we’re in the middle of another task. An easy fix is to manage your email in chunks.

Block off time every few hours to read and respond to emails. You’ll be able to focus on more valuable tasks and spend less time in your inbox.

Schedule distraction time

Long days at the office can be tough, and if you don’t give yourself time to unwind, you can experience burnout.

Add distraction time to your schedule explicitly reserved for this purpose. It can be anything from checking your phone, social media, going for a walk, etc. Every few hours, you should have at least a few minutes to take a break.

By scheduling these distractions, it helps keep them out of your work time and keeps your stress levels in check.

Jeremy Boudinet is the Marketing Manager at Nextiva, Co-President at AA-ISP Phoenix, and a published writer for Time, Entrepreneur, Inc, The Daily Muse, and PopSugar. He has been giving the people what they want since 1986. Contact him on LinkedIn or Twitter to start a conversation about business, sports, music, or anything else under the sun.

About the author

Jeremy Boudinet is the Marketing Manager at Nextiva, Co-President at AA-ISP Phoenix, and a published writer for Time, Entrepreneur, Inc, The Daily Muse, and PopSugar. He has been giving the people what they want since 1986. Contact him on LinkedIn or Twitter to start a conversation about business, sports, music, or anything else under the sun.